EARTHLINGS DOC

By Robb Flynn

THE GENERAL JOURNALS: DIARLY OF A FRONTMAN… AND OTHER RAMBLINGS
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EARTHLINGS DOC

*WARNING: FEEL FREE TO IGNORE THIS POST*
**YOU’VE BEEN WARNED**

This movie was brutal. 

Angering, infuriating, confusing, and downright appalling. 

I’m not even sure where my head is at right now, this movie was such a head fuck.

My takeaway: humans are just plain fucking garbage.

Slipknot got it so right:  People = Shit

(One of the few song titles I go, “damn I wish came up with that!”.)

Yesterday, I posted a movie poster of a documentary that I watched the night before called “What The Health“ on my Insta page. 

Like most of my Internet posts these days, I was flooded with tons of negativity and positivity. 

I mentioned in said post that I had been eating vegan-ish for the last 10 days (half and half in my coffee, holiday pies, etc), but that isn’t really what the post/movie was about.  Tons of people were very positive about it, offering some recommendations for other movies, recipes, Insta pages, etc.  And of course, an enormous amount of people equated me eating vegan for the last 10 days with my musical output of the last "few years" sucking, LOL!   Lots of folks de-bunking the doc who had never even watched it, etc...

“Earthlings" was recommended in the comments, but I had originally heard about this a few months back from my Int. promo dude Markus who is a vegan.  Earthlings isn’t about vegan-ism though, it's more about the food industry, the fashion industry, and the science industry. 

It was fucking hard to watch at times. 

There was a scene that was particularly affecting, where they were mass slaughtering dolphins in Japan.  A few years back when Phil and I were in Australia on tour, we took a chartered group tour to go swimming with the dolphins with about 30 other folks. It was fucking amazing swimming with these friendly animals. 

Seeing these huge, majestic creatures slaughtered was a head fuck of gigantic proportions.  The puppy mills, the chinese fur factory, the way Kosher meat is made… dude… fuck...

For a little context.  Since February I’ve basically been “Paleo“. I started off doing a program called “The Whole 30“ eating entirely meat, nuts, seeds, nut butters, and fruit and veggies and most importantly… no bread, no rice, no pasta, and no sugar!

I lasted the entire 30 days, and since then I've been mostly on it, but it just get fucking boring eating like that for weeks on end.  I'd allowed myself to splurge once or twice a week with bread or cereal or pizza. 

At first, I lost quite a bit of weight.  But as I’ve tried to maintain that, I'd not been very successful.  

In fact by the end of the Catharsis recording session in Sept, I'd gotten to the heaviest weight of my adult life.  My stomach had/has gotten extremely bloated to where I can’t suck it anymore.

So 10 days ago, I went the other way.  Its not the first time I’ve gone vegan/vegan-ish. During Blackening, Burning Red, Ashes, I ate vegan-ish. I think I sent out a General Journal around my 49th birthday talking about another time I’d done it, so this is maybe my fifth time going vegan/ vegan-ish. 

I usually last about a month or two, then smell pepperoni pizza or just get fucking bored of eating that way, and fall off.   

I’ve been overweight all my life, and while I hide it fairly well, especially when I’m off tour cycle, it is quite the struggle to stay in any type of good shape at all.  I workout 3 times a week, but can’t seem to gain muscle / lose weight.  Hell, my wife gains more muscle mass than me!!!   Either that, or my joints, muscles, or ligaments get so sore I have to take break. 

Age hasn’t made this easier.  

Dave has been vegan for the last seven months, and after a brief but inspiring conversation, it made me think about it again.

I’m not expecting to be vegan by the time that I go on tour in a month, but I’m going to give it another shot, changing one aspect that I never did in the past… Which is not eat a bunch of fake processed meat (Quorn, veggie burgers, etc) and just try and have pure plant-based protein sources (nuts/seeds, tofu, etc).

At least at the moment, this movie didn’t push me one way or the other.  My brain is still recoiling from what I watched yesterday, I don’t even know what to think about it at the moment. 

I don’t have the answers. 

I don’t know if vegan is the way.

I don’t know if Paleo is the way.

I don’t know shit. 

I’m not recommending anything.

Believe me, I’m not your Vegan Warrior!  Don’t put me on a pedestal, I will surely let you down!  At the moment I feel like I’ll probably eat meat now and again… because I enjoy it… I think… fuck... I don’t fucking know!!!!

And spare me your ridiculous post about how you don’t want to read my opinions!!!. Fucking UNFOLLOW me if you don’t want to know what’s going on in my head!!!   If talking about eating vegan offends you so much break /delete my records, burn my T-shirts, stop coming to the concerts, don’t fucking listen to us again… I really don’t give a fuck.  

We’re not attached at the hip.  You don’t need to agree-with/listen/support me, and I don’t need to please you.

Watching this movie didn’t give me answers, in fact, it gave me MORE goddamn questions!!!!

I questioned making music, my streetwear line, the food I eat, the way I live, the way I treat fellow earthlings.  Fuck, I wanted to move away to a different planet last night!

The only thing I do know is that everything is changing. 

EVERYTHING!

January 1st recreational marijuana becomes legal in California for the first time.

CDs are going the way of 8-tracks tapes, and if heavy metal doesn’t get on board with streaming, heavy metal will cease to exist.  

Hip-hop and pop music, passed rock music in sales for the first time in HISTORY this year. That’s only going to continue, because those genres fans have embraced streaming. And "rock music" is considered Coldplay, Blink-182, and Mumford & Sons.  

Billionaires and corporations just got the biggest tax break in history…

And the poor just got poorer.

And I’m stuck here in the middle (bottom middle) with you.

But one thing I do know… The gun toting, drug-dealing, stripper-banging, alcoholic, bacon-turkey-eating asshole who wrote “Davidian" 25 years ago, hasn’t been around for a while now… and he just got #wokeasfuck these last two days. 

And if you don’t like it… 

Well... this is where we diverge. 

Enjoy the journey friends, it goes by quick.

EARTHLINGS DOC:  https://vimeo.com/209647801